


Curious and Curiouser

by sunandroses



Series: RotBTD Shipping Fics [3]
Category: Brave (2012), How to Train Your Dragon (Movies), The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - No One Ring, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Dwarf Prince Hiccup, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Human Princess Merida, Meet-Cute, Scholar Hiccup, Slice of Life, and this time i DID edit HA, do i even call this romance? they're just kiddies, someday i'll come back to this and make it more romance-y, they're teenagers, this was supposed to be part of a slowburn that led into their adulthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:33:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25374703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunandroses/pseuds/sunandroses
Summary: Merida meets an interesting stranger one evening and the two share what should have been a friendly chat.
Relationships: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III/Merida (Disney)
Series: RotBTD Shipping Fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783951
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	Curious and Curiouser

**Author's Note:**

  * For [iamlongstockings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamlongstockings/gifts).



> I'd like to wish a happy birthday to **iamlongstockings**!! I know it's not August 16th yet, but I wanted to get this out to you as soon as I could. I'm so happy I got to write this for you and I hope this fun little thing made you happy too!
> 
> According to LotR wiki the Rohirrim's nearest and closest allies are Gondor and that's it. Other than that they've had long-standing disputes with people(?) from the east called Wainriders, other eastern invaders (I'm just going to pretend that's alluding to the Mongols and leave it at that), and the dwarves that lived near/in The Grey Mountains that's located to the north of the Anduin river and which was one of the first places the Rohirrim settled.
> 
> A part of me wanted to do away with that and make the Rohirrim and dwarves allies. But in the end I wanted to see what the interactions between these two would look like with the dispute still there.
> 
> I'd originally planned to make this a lot longer and include a bunch of cutesy romance shenanigans for when these two had grown up more but then I would've taken _way_ too long with this. So have fun with baby Merida ripping into baby Hiccup for being a reckless butthead. 😁
> 
> [Link to Tumblr post](https://ohlooksheswriting-wips.tumblr.com/post/625766521007898624/many-places-i-have-been-many-sorrows-i-have)

It was Angus who saw him first.

Or, more accurately, smelled him. Merida had been walking her horse downhill when his head had suddenly swung left and yanked her along with it.

“Hey, hey, hey! Who’re you?”

Merida pulled back on the reign. She tilted sideways and got a look at the man – or no, not a man. A dwarf. A brown haired, lanky dwarf that looked to be so tiny he came up to her armpits. Not even the little bits of patchy hair scattered on his chin made his face look any less thin and young. His arm was wrapped protectively around his chest, hand clutching something like he expected her horse to eat it.

“Sorry! Sorry, he’s not – he will not harm you, I swear.” Angus might have been big, but he was not a temperamental horse. He still tugged at his reigns but as far as Merida could tell it wasn’t because he was agitated. “I think he’s just curious about you. Say, do you have any food?”

“What? Why do you – oh, wait.” The dwarf rummaged in a pocket and came up with something small and reddish. He held it up to her horse and, with a face that bordered on mystified, watched as Angus delicately plucked it from his hand and turned. They both watched as he went down the hill to join the other grazing horses.

“… Was that a fruit?” She asked.

From the corner of her eye he shrugged. “Someone I know grows them, so I have some.”

When Merida turned back at the dwarf, she saw that he’d taken out another fruit. In his other hand, the one he’d held to his chest, was a book.

She could count on her fingers the number of times she’d seen a book, let alone held one. Her people didn’t believe in keeping books. All the stories they had were either spoken or sung, passed down from old to young.

She wanted to ask about it, but on second thought decided not to. “What are you doing out here, dwarf?”

He was in the middle of taking a big bite when he looked up at her. He swallowed the bite and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Same to you. Isn’t this the edge of the Rohan land?”

“Aye, it is.” Her eyes involuntarily returned to the herd of wild horses that her horse had gone wandering off to. She pointed to a distant group of figures beyond them. “See that? Those are people from my clan. That’s the guard leader out there. She and other trusted men and women – and me – we’ve come out here to scout the borders for our king.”

Merida involuntarily puffed up her chest. She’d been so proud when her parents had allowed her to go with the scout party. At fifteen she’d worked hard to be one of the few to have grown as skilled with shooting and hunting as she’d had, and finally her efforts were paying off.

She deflated a bit when all she got from the dwarf was a quiet, “Ah, I see”.

The dwarf continued to eat the fruit. Aside from that and the book, the only other things he seemed to have on him was a brown rucksack, a few small items scattered around, and no weapons in sight.

If he noticed her scrutiny, he ignored it, apparently more interested in looking at the horses than talking. A few moments of silence passed before Merida decided that she’d had enough.

She sat down on the ground and made herself at home, completely ignoring his awkward shuffle back and instead sticking her hand out.

“Hi! I’m Merida. It’s nice to meet you.”

His eyes went back and forth between her hand. When she didn’t move, he slowly reached out and took it. “It’s … nice to meet you as well.”

 _You’re supposed to introduce yourself too, ee-jut._ Merida thought. But she decided to let it pass. She’d just ask him about it later.

“So … I didn’t know dwarves still lived in The Grey Mountains.”

“We do. Underground, mostly.”

Underground? That was a new one. Merida tried to picture it and made a face. “How do you see down there?”

That made his lips turn up. She counted it as a win. “Out of all the questions that’s the one you ask?”

“It’s an honest question! And now I want to know.”

“What if I told you that’s a dwarf secret?”

“Is it?”

“Well … not really. Most of it is of mirrors, anyways, and those aren’t secret.”

“Mirrors? You mean like polished metal? My Ma uses one of those, it fits in her hand and she carries it on a chain.”

“No, no, not like that – I mean, mirrors _are_ metal, yes. But these are bigger.” The dwarf picked up a nearby stick and started drawing on the ground. “One of these is bigger than three dwarves lined together. These mirrors reflect light, and if they’re hung up in certain places, then they can make the light go to other places and then a combination of other mirrors and crystals catch that light and strengthen it. That way the mountain can be lit up inside with both natural light and fire light.”

It was hard for her to imagine such a thing – would the mirrors be hidden? In plain sight? How high were they placed? How would the light be dimmed or brightened? – but that didn’t make the concept sound any less interesting. The thought that someone’s life could be so different from her own, even in things that they'd consider ordinary, was fascinating. It made a spark of curiosity spring to life inside of her.

As Merida stared at the criss-crossing lines in the dirt, she felt herself smiling. “That’s amazing! How did your people come up with that?”

 _“Necessity demands invention._ Or at least that’s what they say.” The dwarf waved the stick in his hand vaguely. The movement drew her attention to his book, which had fallen to the wayside.

“What’s this?” She picked it up.

“Hey, don’t-”

Too late, Merida had opened it wide. On the page was a drawing. It was drawn with charcoal and showed a running goat. The lines were hurried and rough, done in thick black strokes that made the goat look like less like an animal and more like a thought.

She took a moment to consider it and decided she liked it.

“… This is nice. It looks pretty.”

“That is _not_ pretty. It’s not even done.” He tried to grab his book, but Merida held it out of reach.

“Oh, hush, yes it is. I like it and I think you did well. Can I see more?”

He scowled at her. She smiled charmingly and batted her eyes back. He huffed and flopped his arms down and Merida took that as a yes.

“What’s this?” She pointed to a drawing.

“That’s a lock.”

“What’s this?”

“That’s a toy.”

“What about this? And this? What do these do?”

“That … that is part of a mechanical system.” He tugged the book closer and flipped it to a different page, one where the parts she’d seen were attached together. “It’s a belt and pulley system that’s used for carrying heavy loads.”

“Huh.” Merida tilted her head. “Looks complicated. Why did you all have to think up so many things?”

“That’s what happens when you live underground. You have to “adapt to survive” and “be self-sufficient”. Not like there's much of a choice.” His tone became oddly bitter. Merida looked up and saw that his scowl was back.

"... Are we still talking about pullies? Or is this something else?”

And suddenly the dwarf’s face went from angry to pained.

“It’s … it’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

He turned away from her, but not before she caught his mouth crumpling up. Merida sat and watched as he started stuffing his book and other small items into a rucksack, as if he planned to get up and leave behind whatever memories had suddenly arisen.

Later, she'd tell herself that she’d stopped him only because something about him had looked terribly lonely.

“Alright, listen,” she grabbed his arm and waited for him to look at her, “my camp is going to spend the night near here and then we will leave. If you want to you will never see me again. So whatever it is you’re thinking you might as well say it.”

The dwarf visibly gulped. But Merida stared him down until he looked away. “It’s a long story.”

“Then make it shorter. Just tell me, I’ll listen.”

“It’s not-…” The dwarf sighed. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, until he found his voice, “… I may have … run away from home.”

There was a beat of silence.

Of all the directions she'd expected the conversation to go, this hadn't been any of them.

“… You _what?”_

“I ran away, alright! I needed to go and I did. I can’t explain but it’s complicated. You don’t know what I-”

He prattled on, but Merida had stopped listening. He was a runaway. He wasn’t just some dwarfling who’d been wandering near his home when she’d happened upon him, oh no. He was a dwarfling who’d just up and run out into mountain country that immediately led to grasslands with neither stream nor shelter anywhere in sight. He’d gone all the way out there carrying nothing more than a rucksack with no kin, no weapons, no guidance, no _nothing-_

Even with the makings of a beard, he still looked so young. He couldn’t even have been much older than her, he _couldn’t._

“How old are you?”

“I- what does that-?”

“I asked you a question. How old are you?”

“I … I’m twenty nine.”

“And I’m supposed to believe that. How old are you really?”

“I _am_ twenty nine. In dwarf years, and it means, um – it means that in human years I, I’m thirteen.”

“You are _thirteen,_ you-!” Merida abruptly let go of him and stood up.

She put her fingers to her mouth and unleashed a sharp whistle. Moments later Angus came cantering up the hill and Merida ran out to meet him. Grabbing a few things from her saddle bags, she returned to the dwarf-boy and shoved them at him.

 _“Are you crazy?”_ She snapped. “Are you absolutely crazy? What were you thinking? Do you want to _die_ out here – no, shut up. You listen to me. I bet you’ve been out here for less than a week which is why you aren’t _deader than dead_ already, so you listen to me. You turn around right now and go back the way you came. That’s food enough to last you a few days and that’s a waterskin. If you’d kept going this way you would’ve found no river and great big animals that want to kill you – _how_ you didn’t find bandits and get the wind kicked out of you I don’t know. But if I ever find you alone out here again, I will do it myself!”

Merida would’ve stormed off then – she was _this_ close to shaking him – but before she could he grabbed her sleeve.

“Wait! I can’t accept all this.”

“Yes, you will. Now let go before I-”

“Shouldn’t I give you something too?”

“I don’t know! What do you have to give me?”

“Wait wait wait, let me-” he let go and rummaged in his sack. Merida tapped her foot impatiently until he pulled something out.

“This is a rune-bead. You can put it in a necklace or jewellery or something. And, and here-” His hands dove into his pockets and he took out three fruits that he tipped into her palms. “You can have those, too.”

“… Thank you.” Years of learning manners forced the words out, she had nothing to do with that. But she made sure to keep the annoyance on her face. “But you still have to leave.”

Not waiting for a reply, Merida spun around and left. The fruits went into her pocket; she would try one later, when she was alone. The bead, however …

The bead would have to go somewhere else, or else she’d lose it. Merida dug around for a bit and came up with a length of twine that she strung the bead through and tied around her wrist. She took a moment to get a good look at it.

The bead was the thickness of her littlest finger and roughly cut. But the quality was good enough to let the deep green colouring of it to show through, with veins of brighter colours branching out like lightning. On one of it’s faces was a sharp little marking that could’ve meant anything. Merida doubted she’d find out.

That didn’t stop her mind from coming up with questions. Questions like what the rune meant, what it sounded like when spoken, whether it held some significance, if it was a part of a name-

Merida stopped in her tracks.

She’d forgotten to ask his name.

When she looked back up the hill, the dwarf-boy was already gone.

**Author's Note:**

> And now back to the Hogwarts AU fic!! 🎉🎉 I estimate I'll have the next chapter out in about 2 weeks. Stay safe and I'll see you soon! 🤗
> 
> (Note: For those who're wondering, there's some funky business going on with soul bonds and what-not that'll affect the ageing between these two. I'll write more about it whenever I come back to this.)


End file.
